Great looking bikes!! Thanks for forwarding the close-ups of the Pass Hunter cockpit. I assume you're using friction shifters? I am embracing the concepts of simplicity and reliability and converting my bike to friction shifting.

The instructions for your Zeste brakes say to mount the straddle cable about 6" high, but the photos of these brakes on your Pass Hunter show a much shorter cable, which seems to make more sense. Which is correct?

6 inches is actually preferable in a lot of scenarios. However, it is often unattainable on the rear brakes due to clearance issues at the cable stop. Now that you point it out, those straddle cables could probably use to be a little higher. That being said, they still brake fine as they are. If you're still interested in straddle cable height I wrote a fairly arduous blogpost about it a while ago:

My high school level physics tells me the maximum pull is when the bridge cable is perpendicular to the brake arm. That means the Zeste should have a shorter cable and the other cantis should have a longer cable. I bought a set of zestes for my Surly, but am now saving them for the Camargue.